In many industrial operations, it is necessary to sequentially mark a large number of objects as, for example, in providing serial numbers for machine parts, or in printing a large number of individual objects such as credit cards.
One way of making a large number of individual objects is to sequentially mark individual numbers on each of the objects. If there were 1,000 objects, this would involve 1,000 separate marking operations with the number 1 being marked on the first object, the number 2 on the next, etc. until the thousandth object has been marked. This type of marking procedure is cumbersome for mass production operations dealing with very large numbers of objects, such as, the printing of five million credit cards with each having its own individual number.